


Mos Espa Grapevine

by DaughterOfDungeonBat



Series: Shifted Sands [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: "I'll Know It When I See It", Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Banned Together Bingo, BannedTogether2020, Gen, Prompt Fill, Qui-Gon Jinn Lives, Qui-Gon friendly, be nice to my emotional support hippie space dad, local gossip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:27:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28203117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaughterOfDungeonBat/pseuds/DaughterOfDungeonBat
Summary: Shmi Skywalker's son is returned to her, as told by the neighborhood gossip of Mos Epsa.(Part of the first act of the Shifted Sands universe. Basically, Qui-Gon lives but the Council still won't train Anakin so he gets homeschooled in the Force by his space step-dad.)
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Shmi Skywalker, future Shmi Skywalker/Qui-Gon Jinn
Series: Shifted Sands [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1920016
Comments: 4
Kudos: 36
Collections: Banned Together Bingo 2020





	Mos Espa Grapevine

**Author's Note:**

> So. It's been a while... Grad school, ammirite? Right now I'm just trying to get back into the swing of writing, so I'm not totally happy with this, but I wanted to try something different.  
> This is for the very weird Banned Together Bingo prompt of 'I'll know it when I see it,' which I have interpreted here as promoting immoral behavior such as gossip. I figured that's something a conservative idiot would take issue with, besides the aliens and space wizards.  
> As with almost all of my fanfiction, special thanks to Emily at Fantasy Name Generator, which is where I get all my names. She is a gift to fandom.

It did not take long for word to spread in Mos Espa that Watto’s mechanic had been purchased. It never took long for news of anything to get around, it was just a matter of how many onlookers it took to piece together a mostly truthful tale.  
  
Threl saw the ship arrive at the spaceport, and the same man rolling into town just as suddenly as he had the year before, and she recognized the tall off-worlder who had driven Watto so mad. When her wife asked later she would swear that she saw little Ani Skywalker with him, but in truth she had found out about the boy’s return from her brother later, who had seen Anakin kicking up sand as he ran, the man trailing after him at a more reasonable pace from the window of the cantina where he worked.  
  
“I mean, I didn’t get a good look at the guy at the Boonta Eve,” Breshin explained to Threl, “but it was a tall human with long hair, right? Had to be him.”  
  
The local gossip had no accounts of what happened when Anakin and the Jedi reached Watto’s shop, of the little boy yelling for his mother as he rounded the corner and Shmi weeping as she caught him in her arms, dropping to her knees heedless of the sand. No, the only witnesses to the reunion until Watto yelled loud enough to summon more onlookers was a family of jawas sorting through the treasures they had found in an alleyway. But no one ever asked jawas for gossip, so they never shared.  
  
At least not with humans, anyway, but the three of them held their little ones extra close when they returned home.  
  
~  
  
“My sister said the guy grabbed the blue bastard by the neck like a monkey lizard.” A twi’lek told her partner between sets the next day.  
  
“Your sister’s a liar. Not that I wouldn’t pay to see it.”  
  
~  
  
The news that Shmi had not just been sold on came later when Quinara, a local physician, ended the sabacc-table debate on which system poor Shmi was going to be sent off to next between rolls of the dice.  
  
“I wouldn’t bet on this fight, boys.” She said, smirking as her opponents hesitated in both their bets in the game and their argument. “Skywalker’s a free woman. Removed her detonator myself, with Ani chattering that off-worlder’s ear off in the next room.”  
  
Quinara did not add until two rounds later that their beloved mechanic would not be leaving the city, just the slave quarter, in hopes of catching the weequay bartender off-guard and getting ahead. The added information Anakin had babbled on about, namely that the off-worlder was a runaway Jedi planning on teaching Ani magic, won her the pot.  
  
~  
  
“He’s Anakin’s father!” Cried Vera, the previously mentioned lying sister, as she burst into her sister’s apartment, causing Kina to drop the root vegetable she was peeling as the door slammed against the wall.  
  
“Karking shit!” Kina replied, seriously considering turning the small knife on said sister. Vera was unphased.  
  
“The off-worlder! Shmi called him her husband, and he’s living with them outside of town! I told you he wasn’t a Jedi.”  
  
Kina still wanted to stab her sister for interrupting her cooking, but at least the fiasco with the Skywalkers had been solved.

**Author's Note:**

> Sadly, Qui-Gon did not hurt Watto, but I think if he did, the blue fuck would deflate like a whoopie cushion.  
> To explain what's going on at the end here- no, Shmi and Qui-Gon don't just fall into a relationship, but Shmi has been on Tatooine long enough to know about the rumor mill. She knows 'yep, this is my husband, we live here now' will cause far less whispers than 'this is a space wizard who's going to be teaching my son magic.' As for the house they moved to, Shmi has been saving to buy her and Ani's freedom for a long time, but she knew she would need enough to get them established somewhere (house, supplies, stuff to start some sort of livelihood) or else they would end up exactly where they started. She actually had enough money stashed to buy her freedom at the end of Phantom Menace, but she knew that Watto would have been too angry about the whole thing to even consider letting her go, and might have not let her try again.


End file.
